London - Binge drinking could be curbed by calling time on curved glasses.
Researchers found the speed at which people drink alcohol is influenced by the shape of the glass they’re using and whether or not it has measurement markings.
Straight glasses – which make it easier to tell how fast we’re drinking – appear to help us drink more slowly, as do reminders of how much we have already consumed, according to experiments carried out in pubs.
Psychology researchers David Troy and Angela Attwood from the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at the University of Bristol presented their research at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference in Liverpool. They took 150 men and women with no history of alcohol problems to three pubs over two weekends to compare how the shape of glasses affected their drinking.
When the volunteers drank from straight-sided glasses the pubs reported 24 percent less takings than the days when curved glasses were used.
Troy said: “It seems it’s more difficult to tell how much you’re drinking from a curved glass.”
The team also studied another 160 men and women, split into two groups. Both groups were given a half of beer in a curved glass but one group’s glasses had measurements of a quarter, half and three quarters.
The group with the marked glasses drank more than a minute slower than the non-marked group – 10.3 minutes on average compared to 9.1. The same researchers carried out a similar study in 2012 on 159 people, but in a laboratory setting. It found a curved or dimpled glass led to participants drinking at almost double the speed of those using a straight glass.
Daily Mail